Page 63 of The Cowboy and the Baby

“Let’s dance.”

22

NOELLE

Gravity.

Time.

They ceased to exist.

The moment Cade twirled me into his hard chest and expertly eased us into a cluttered dance floor, I forgot everything but the feel of his iron arms around me. He held onto my waist with one arm, my hand with the other. Our fingers braided, a clear intent he didn’t mean to let go.

The smell of his musky cologne, the sensation of nearness to a man that I hadn’t experienced in years, took the breath out of me. Cade attempted to spin me, but I stumbled. I tightened my arms, bracing myself to fall, but his hold tightened around my waist before it was possible.

“Relax,” he whispered against my ear.

His breath grazed my earlobe. A shiver wracked my spine. Heat flooded my cheeks as he stepped us to the side, out of the rushing dancers who seemed to be everywhere, all at once. He’d plunged us into the middle of a tilt-o-whirl.

With a laugh in his voice, he said, “Noelle, what are you afraid of? I’d never let you fall.”

But I clung to him, irrationally scared, while the world danced. I was overwhelmed, out of my depth. Cade, more than the noise and the smells and the sounds, was so near. So close. And he’d asked me here tonight, which seemed like a streak of luck that I couldn’t hold onto too tight or else it might burn me.

“I know you wouldn’t,” I managed to say, breathless. “I just . . . I don’t know how to do this.”

But I didn’t mean dance.

Both of us knew it.

His hand lifted from my waist to my chin, elevating it until I had to look in his eyes. I expected kindness and compassion, but I saw hunger and ferocity.

If you knew, I thought, the precipice of love that we walked in my family. The expectations. Demands. Nothing came for free. Nothing.

Cade whispered, “Trust me.”

I had no breath to answer with, so I nodded.

He glanced around, made an instant assessment, and melded us into the flow. We became the storm, and this time I focused on his firm hand. The not-too-tight-but-still-possessive grip, as if a dancing partner gave him claim, for however short a time, on me. When I released my legs, instead of checking my steps, focusing on how he moved instead of me, I stopped stumbling.

Cade looked right into my eyes.

“That’s it, Noelle. That’s it. Keep it up. Trust me. Stay with me. And now we’re going to have fun.”

The rumbling promise in his voice heated my blood.

If dancing is what he called it when we moved together in rhythm and synchronicity, then what happened next would be labeled wild abandon. He flung me into the maze of bodies, then flicked a wrist and brought me back to his chest. My body twirled. The room spun dizzily, coating me in the too-close scents of perfume and cologne. I laughed, floating.

The way he smiled, sang, stomped, dodged other dancers with expert movements, I couldn’t comprehend. He chuckled when I executed three turns and pressed our hands together again.

Cade laughed. It was full bodied, deep. The low lights and heady thud-thud-thud of cowboy boots on the wooden floor was a thrilling melody.

Cade was a poem.

No, a poet.

His cryptic explanation of letting go and trust made sense. In order for Cade to move, to spin, to adjust to the music, I had to let him. There was trust and surrender and a wild, deeper sense of rightness to Cade’s hand being in mine, the flowing world. Nothing else mattered but the two of us.

The dance stretched into eternity, yet finished too quickly. Before I realized what had happened, he spun me into his arms, tossed me to the other side, and dipped me at the exact moment the song ended.